Taming the Wild West: Online Excesses, Reactions and Overreactions

A review essay discussing Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press 2014) and Amy Adele Hasinoff’s, Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy and Consent (University of Illinois Press 2015). Both books consider the risks and harms in cyberspace, blaming of victims, and the interaction between law and online expression. Citron documents widespread hate speech, cyberstalking, revenge porn, and other speech that especially targets women online. Hasinoff, grounded in feminist and cultural studies, emphasizes the positive aspects of the agency girls who sext voluntarily display in exploring and displaying their sexuality, arguing that advising girls that control of their own lives must lead them refuse to sext (a widespread approach) deprives them of voice. Both books analyze law and propose legal reforms, and both also explore the relationship between social norms and legal regimes. Ross’s review finds commonality in the authors’ arguments that women “have a right to sexual expression without fear of moral or legal repercussions” and that both ultimately “look to greater self-policing by the technology industry,” and to promoting “cultural transformation” as much as legal change.